general survey of a poem, the scene not being drawn from one particular passage or episode. The features of one poem are in art sometimes transferred to another. The attention that has been paid now for many years to collecting, assorting, and critically discussing the material afforded by the vases has much diminished the difficulties of this most puzzling branch of archaeology. It has been chiefly lightened by the discovery from time to time of inscribed vases, though, as has just been noted, even these must be treated with caution; and even now, of course, there are numerous subjects the interpretation of which is either disputed or purely hypothetical. But we can at least pride ourselves on having advanced many degrees beyond the labours of early writers on the subject, down to the year 1850. When painted vases first began to be discovered in Southern Italy, the subjects were supposed to relate universally to the Eleusinian or Dionysiac mysteries, and this school of interpretation for a long time found favour in some quarters, even in the days of Gerhard and De Witte. But it was obvious from the first that such interpretations did not carry the investigator very far, and even in the eighteenth century other systems arose, such as that of Italynski, who regarded the subjects as of historical import.[27] Subsequently Panofka endeavoured to trace a connection between the subjects and the names of artists or other persons recorded on the vases, or, again, between the subjects and shapes. The latter idea, of course, contained a measure of truth, as is seen in many instances[28]; but it was, of course, impossible to follow out either this or the other hypothesis in any detail. The foundations of the more scientific and rational school of interpretation were laid as early as the days of Winckelmann, and he was followed by Lanzi, Visconti, and Millingen, and finally Otto Jahn, who, as we have seen, practically revolutionised the study of ceramography. Of late, however, the question of the interpretation of subjects has been somewhat relegated to the background, owing to the overwhelming interest evoked by the finds of early fabrics or by the efforts of German and other scholars to distinguish the various schools of painting in the finest period.